Onion Eater
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2008
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- Scottsdale, AZ
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- Political Leaning
- Libertarian
No state for them.They're going to continue engaging in piracy until there is a strong state in Somalia to prevent them.
Just my two cents.
You may not agree with me but at least appreciate my honesty in this matter.
I am sick and tired of our country being anchored down from progress because of some 3rd world, ignorant, nasty, archaic culture bent on stupidity.
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Catch me on a bad day and I might even be a littler harsher in my opinion. :rofl
Bloody hell, punish the villagers first. The villagers are the ones getting the benefit of the pirates' ill gotten gains but don't even have the balls to be doing the looting themselves.Don't punish the villagers for what is happening at sea...
I feel the same about our GOP leadership....:2razz:
I feel the same about our GOP leadership....:2razz:
Maybe we should just go into the really bad neighborhoods of the US and unload a few thousand machine gun rounds every where.
Same logic i'm getting from this thread.
My mind is blown by the ignorance.
Are those "really bad" neighborhoods conspiring to aid and abet pirates?Maybe we should just go into the really bad neighborhoods of the US and unload a few thousand machine gun rounds every where.
Same logic i'm getting from this thread.
My mind is blown by the ignorance.
Are those "really bad" neighborhoods conspiring to aid and abet pirates?
No? Didn't think so.....NEXT!
They say a young man that is not liberal has no heart.
They say that a mature man that is not conservative has no brain.
While I do admire your Lennon approach of "Love, love, love" (and I really do) I am grateful that the mature men makes the decisions on national security.
Keep the faith brother.
Onion Eater,
I believe some form of military action might be helpful, but such action would need to comply with the Laws of War e.g., compliance would rule out indiscriminate bombardment. Attacks that target pirates, pirate facilities/boats and/or weapons would be legitimate.
Several possible steps might include:
1. Scheduling the passage of shipping so as to allow for naval escorts.
2. Capturing strategic points on the Somali coastline e.g., major ports used by the pirates. Merely raiding or clearing the villages probably won't provide a sustainable solution.
3. Creating a temporary secured zone comprised of those captured areas, with the African Union taking charge of security arrangements.
4. If or when--probably if, in the near-term--Somalia has a government capable of exercising jurisdiction in the captured areas, those areas could revert to Somalia. That understanding should be explicit, as Somalia is presently a failed state, but it should not be assumed that Somalia will remain a failed state over the longer-term. There needs to be flexibility to allow Somalia to regain control over its territory once it overcomes its failed state status.
5. Some form of international assistance for the Somali coastal communities so that the economic environment would become less attractive to piracy.
A UN Security Council resolution would be quite helpful in pursuing some of the above steps e.g., setting up a temporary protected zone. An understanding that is reached with the nominal Somali government and any leading Somali tribal elders could also be beneficial.
There is a possibility that agreements forged with Somali tribal elders might reduce the need for military action by reducing piracy. If that avenue is productive, then military operations might not be necessary or they could be more limited than described above.
What laws? What nation has jurisdiction in international waters? (answer: NONE).Laws are enforced on a case by case bases, you just don't go nuking and bombing shanti towns because there are a section of crimanls in them.
In my experience, people are motivated by only two things: fear and greed. The Somalis have tasted greed. Now let us teach them fear.
The Laws of War only apply to state-to-state conflicts and there is no state in Somalia.
We are already doing this, but it is a costly and incomplete solution. It is a big area and there is far to much commercial shipping to organize everybody into convoys.
3) Capturing territory is a really bad idea unless you have some plan for managing that territory. If we learned nothing else from the debacle in Iraq, we should have learned that, at least.
Anyway, there are no "strategic points" because the pirate ships do not need deep-water ports. They can be based almost anywhere along the Somali coast.
This is the fundamental flaw in your reasoning, Don. As a Westerner, you assume that a national government, a "state," is the natural form of government for all people everywhere and that the lack thereof is somehow unnatural.
Your use of the term "failed state" implies that a state is the ideal and that any other type of government is a failure to live up to what everybody acknowledges is the ideal. But not everybody acknowledges or even understands this ideal, Don.
Also unnatural to Africans is the concept of a court of law that tries individuals for crimes. If an individual has defied the will of his tribe, they will kill or exile him. But, if they have not, then all of his actions can be assumed to have been taken on behalf of his tribe.
Thus, if an individual African has crossed you, the appropriate and entirely natural response is to decimate his tribe. While "indiscriminate shelling" may be abhorrent to the Western mind, the fact is, that is just the way things work in Africa.
Why is this in the economics forum?
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